1. Statement of the Technical Field
This invention generally relates to methods and apparatuses for managing contacts at contact centers and, more specifically, to improving the processing of incoming contacts to the most suitable agent or agents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Contact centers are widely used to allow an enterprise or business to efficiently handle customer enquiries, complaints and support, and to allow an enterprise to make contact with existing or potential customers.
Contact centers receive contacts in many forms, such as telephone calls, chat session requests, emails, video calls, short messaging service (SMS) messages and any other such communications between a remote user and an agent. While the term “call center” is used interchangeably with “contact center” herein, it is to be understood that this is not a limitation on the type of contact center to which the invention applies. Such contacts must be processed and this usually means that they are assigned to agents based on the skill sets needed to effectively deal with the contacts. Because agents deal with many contacts throughout the day and the load on the center varies over time, it is necessary to maintain queues both of contacts which are waiting to be assigned and of agents who are ready for the next suitable contact. This problem becomes more complex when a contact requires the services of multiple agents or when multiple related contacts require the services of one or more agents.
A typical contact center will have two main components, namely a network interface such as a switch or a private branch exchange (PBX) which handles the calls themselves, and a management component such as a contact center server for controlling the operation of the PBX to direct calls to suitable agents. Thus, based on information gleaned from the call in its initial stages, e.g., from menu choices made in an interactive voice response (IVR) session, the contact center server (or contact manager) will determine a skill set which an agent would ideally require to handle the call. An agent is identified from those currently active at the center, taking into account the skills required to handle the call and other relevant data available to the contact center server, and the PBX is directed to transfer the call to that agent by the contact center server when the agent becomes free.
Nortel Networks provides a contact center solution in which its Meridian PBX is associated with a Symposium Call Center Server (SCCS) (Nortel, Meridian, Symposium and SCCS are trademarks). Of note, Symposium Call Center Server has been recently renamed the Nortel Contact Center. The possibility currently exists to network a number of contact centers by providing an Internet or other WAN link between the respective SCCS units of different contact centers, and by providing telephony links such as dedicated ISDN (integrated services digital network) lines or links over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) between the respective Meridian PBX units. A Networked Call Center (NCC) server may be provided on the WAN to propagate to each SCCS the network address and routing tables for all of the other networked call centers.
In conventional contact centers, contacts, regardless of whether they need the skill sets associated with multiple agents and regardless of whether there are multiple related contacts that can be serviced as a unit, are first routed through a workflow designed to determine the priority of the contact and the skill set(s) required to deal with the contact (indeed the skill set may determine the priority rating assigned to a contact). In the case of voice calls, the call will then be typically held at a private branch exchange (PBX) or a call server, and an identifier for that call will then be passed, along with the results of the workflow routing, to a contact queuing module (or “queue manager” which is part of the contact manager).
The queue manager maintains one or more queues or lists of contact identifiers, and new contacts are inserted into the appropriate queue based on skill set determinations from the workflow, and at the point in the queue determined by the priority assigned to the contact by the workflow process. However, current systems also do not address queuing and prioritization in the case where a contact requires multiple skill sets which may be associated with one or multiple agents.
Even when general queuing issues are addressed, another problem occurs when multiple skill sets are required to service a contact, but there is an insufficient supply of agents who possess all of the skills needed to handle the contact, and it is not desirable to handle each skill set separately or via callback. Similarly, the queuing problem is further complicated when a group of related contacts requires the skill set associated with one or more agents. The contacts may be related, one example being multiple students attempting to establish a team-based session with an instructor, where it is desirable that individual teams are queued to the instructor. Therefore, a need exists for an improved contact center queue management system and method that addresses and solves the aforementioned problems.